Today people have a variety of accounts to services over a variety of networks. These accounts range from social networking services and online banking services to work services and retail loyalty services. Individuals manage a variety of user names and passwords for each of these services. Moreover, user name and password requirements can change based on newly imposed security requirements by the services. The situation has become increasingly difficult for users to effectively manage their online services.
Furthermore, often a user wants to share information with other people or services that are not a part of a same corporate/service directory or identity system. The shared information can be attributes of the user's identity such as name, company/service identifier (ID), or other user identity data. The user may also need to share other data or services that may be protected by an access control system, such as files or applications.
For example, a user may want to use a tax product to logon to a user's investment service and acquire tax documents that are automatically downloaded to the tax product for assisting the user in filing his/her taxes. The only mechanism available for this to occur today is for the user to provide the tax product with the user's ID and password into the investment service, often this makes the user nervous about giving credentials because if the tax product were to become compromised, the user's investment account could be easily compromised.
Although it is possible for and administrator to move files and resources to an isolated system that allows controlled public access to limited resources of a user, this requires more work than it may be worth; as such, this is infrequently, if ever, done. Furthermore, this situation creates a liability problem for a company, since the user's private data is exposed to leakage, without user permission. So, as more and more personal data (which a user desires to share with others) is held by corporate, governmental, and educational systems, the management and security of that personal data becomes more complex and costly.